Sometime in early June, I woke up to see an alarming number of notifications on my smartphone. It seemed as though all social networks to which I belonged had been seized with a sudden fever. It would take me 45 minutes of painstakingly following threads on Twitter and checking news websites to get a full […]

On June 23, 2016, I had a close shave. About 7.30PM, I was on a bus traversing Lagos-Ibadan expressway when we were attacked by armed robbers. They were four in number, faces concealed with black masks, each of them carrying long guns whose description you wouldn’t expect me to know because it turned out the […]

It is not often that one speaks of one’s labours, and unless one’s labours have yielded some definite product, there are rarely listening ears to catch one’s story. It is as though one’s tale, for the sole reason that it appears to be stuck in limbo, is presumed to lack significance, and is therefore given […]

by Omoya Yinka Simult (This article was first published on page 38 of Leadership newspaper on June 8, 2017. An online version was also later published on TheCable on June 10, 2017) “One day, we arrested a Cabinet Minister for engaging in corruption. On the day he was arrested, Members of Parliament from his ethnic group came […]

​by Omoya Yinka Simult (The long essay you’re about to read won me Sigma Tertiary Essay Competition II in Nigeria on May 3, 2017. Happy reading!) INTRODUCTION It is hard to be a Nigerian at the moment. On July 21, 2016, while appearing before the Senate, the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, declared for […]

There is an interesting case of a persistent Nigerian woman, who is plausibly the first female presidential candidate both at the primaries and main elections, having contested to be President on four different occasions. In her most recent attempt, and perhaps the very last, at the PDP presidential primary election held in January 2011, out […]

I woke up with a pain in my butt. More correctly, I woke up this morning with a royal pain in my black ass. That my ass is black is no news, no big deal in fact. At least I am better than Jack. Jack’s case is hopeless because his ass is worse than black. […]

He cowers. His head is buried in his arms, face down, body tensed. This is it, and it is very different from what he had always imagined before now. Splendid vistae of tumbling waves, inconspicuous perturbations of the sea at its horizon, seamless deluge of flashbacks, of memories tucked away like a withered hand — […]